


Double Take

by CloudAtlas



Series: Valentine's Prompts 2015 [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Community: be_compromised, Espionage, Gen, Red Room, Skeevy Jacques Duquesne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-02-12
Packaged: 2018-03-12 02:34:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3340367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudAtlas/pseuds/CloudAtlas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt: <i>Clint and Natasha meet at an earlier point in their life, but they don't remember. Years later, through whatever circumstances, they meet again when fate brings them together.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Double Take

**Author's Note:**

  * For [andibeth82](https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/gifts).



> Very light on the "fate" element.

When she was small, her handlers would sometimes pick them up and dump them in a foreign airport – normally of a country which prided itself on apprehending people like her handlers. Because it was a game as much as it was a training exercise; see how much they can push before something snaps, before these countries notice that assassins and terrorists are being trained on their soil, before they connect the bodies – like children playing join-the-dots only to find the larger picture is scarier than they expected.

But it was also a training exercise. Get as far away from the airport in five days as you can, don’t get caught, kill someone important; we don’t care who.

She was once dropped in JFK, New York. Unlike many of the other girls, she stayed for a day, researching. There was an Australian politician visiting Vancouver for some reason. He’d make a good target. She’d have to cross a continent and a border to get to him but that would please her handlers; it would prove she was better than the others.

She was only ten, but she made it as far as Montana before anyone noticed her. It was amazing what people could ignore if they wanted. But in Montana someone noticed; a man with wandering hands and lustful eyes. She knew what to do with men like that. But before she could do anything, someone else noticed too; a boy, fifteen or so, grubby and skinny and worse for wear. 

He stood in front of her, like she needed protecting.

“That’s just sick, Duquesne,” he snarled, “Even for you.”

“Get out of my way, boy.” 

The man’s voice was thick with drink, and he took a heavy swing at the boy, sending him flying. Amateurs, the lot of them.

The man – Duquesne – suddenly lunged for her, but he fell short as the boy tangled himself around his knees.

“Go, kiddo,” the boy panted, before grunting in pain as Duquesne managed to kick him in the chest. “Run.”

She’d seen no sense in meddling with idiots scrabbling in the mud, so she had run.

She’d killed the man in Vancouver, and a Canadian politician to boot, and had been rewarded with a rare smile from her handler.

She hadn’t thought about those training exercises since.

Apart from – 

The man following her, the one with the sharp eyes and archaic weapon, he looks familiar. Under layers of conflicting maybe-memories, under those static blank spaces in her mind, she can see a skinny, worse for wear boy saying, “Go, kiddo. Run.”

It’s disorientating, making her feel off kilter and vaguely nauseous, but she has a job to do so she pushes through; pushes though pushes through pushes through until she pushes through a door and comes face to face with the tip of an arrow, and she can see that skinny boy again.

“That seemed unnecessarily violent,” The man with the bow says referring, in all probability, to the carnage two rooms over, “Even for you.”

_Even for you_.

Her gun falters incrementally, and she’s just a moment to slow to avoid the fist that smashes into the side of her head, knocking her out.

_Go, kiddo._

_Run._

But she’s so tired of running.


End file.
